Kane County's history includes an experiment in
the 1870s when Mormon leader Brigham Young tried a form of socialism in which
residents pooled and divided resources for the common good. That didn't last
long. But it appears Kane County's current conservative Republican commission
still has a problem with the free-enterprise system.

How else can the commission's recent actions trying to subvert an environmental
organization's purchase of Bureau of Land Management grazing rights be interpreted?

Between 1999 and 2001, the Arizona-based Grand Canyon Trust bought $1.5 million
of grazing permits on 350,000 acres of Grand Staircase Escalante National Monument
land from willing sellers, with the idea of retiring those permits.

Fearing the loss of their area's agricultural industry, Kane County Commissioners
sued to take away the trust's property, arguing the permits must be used to
graze cattle. Even though the trust was using some permits for grazing, that
wasn't enough.

Commissioners persuaded the Utah Legislature to spend more than $100,000 of
state tax money to sue the BLM for issuing the permits to the Grand Canyon Trust.
If an environmental organization sued to obtain grazing permits from a rancher,
conservatives would call this "a taking." So how can they justify
trying to grab the trust's legally obtained rights?

The lawsuit looks like a waste of taxpayer dollars. An administrative law judge
and the Interior Department's Land Board of Appeals have already tossed Kane
County's case, which is being argued by the state of Utah. Now the commission
wants to take the matter to district court, likely squandering more money on
a losing cause.

Since public-land ranchers have claimed for years that their permits are private
property, going so far as using those permits as loan collateral, the case against
the trust looks even more absurd.

Utah's free-enterprise-espousing politicians ought to be ashamed of themselves
for wasting money on Kane County's frivolous lawsuit. The commissioners are
far from the socialists who settled parts of Kane County in the 1870s, but don't
seem to have a problem subverting the free market.